WEBVTT

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And I have one last
short, urban thing.

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At the end of this, I
reference the flipboard

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in train stations.

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I don't know if you know the
flipboards because many of them

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are gone.

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There was a beautiful one in
the train station in Baltimore.

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And there was a great one
in Penn Station in New York.

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And you know, when the
trains come, they flip.

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And it's such a great sound.

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I'm just afraid
they're also obsolete

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that you won't understand
the sound of the flipboard.

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There are some out there still.

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So, you know, lest you think
I'm some green wanderer,

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I do live in Baltimore city.

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And we have our
issues in Baltimore.

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This is called "On Luxury."

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"No one's ready.

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To sit here on a
wooden bench and not

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have to think of a gunman
shattering the train station's

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bustle.

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Early light, scent of coffee.

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That's a luxury.

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I forget sometimes, like
I forget having legs,

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which is just a given, we say.

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But it is given.

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I'm not arguing by
God, luck, or science--

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just that it could be otherwise.

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And luxury is its best
measure, that unit lux,

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of illumination, diurnal in
slices across a pine floor,

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ferocious midday
translucing my boy's ear,

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drooling a wine berry,
breaking in surf,

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and in outgoing ripples
recomposing its silvery veil.

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Here, canine patrols
are making their rounds,

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sniffing our bags, moving along.

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People take mild note and
return to their business.

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Why aren't we ready
to think of our peace?

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How amazing I've never
planned my escape.

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Quick, let me think.

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I'd run down to the
tracks, jump off the end,

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hide under the platform.

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But I needn't do that.

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Luxury to read in the Baltimore
Sun the phrase 'murder rate'

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and not have to see the facts
of my life recounted therein.

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Luxury to read and not
follow the phrase down

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to a bloody wet stash of drugs,
clothes torn and scattered,

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the whole torrent of
shit, junk, paraphernalia,

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jumping the curb,
sluicing a front stoop,

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my stoop, the one I'd climb
daily returning from work,

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couldn't scrub clean
with deep cracks

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where the necklace they
shot him for landed.

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Luxury to turn back,
to roll coffee paper,

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to pair the word shooting with
elsewhere, to let elsewhere

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be faceless and stoopless,
miasmic panegyric,

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and broken from mainland,
unmapped, unscratched,

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or sketched very
badly and broadly

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with stylized alley
and pile of garbage,

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shattered glass, prostitutes.

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I can skim fast, skip the rock
of my gaze over the headlines,

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let it grip nothing,
be seized by nothing,

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just skitter across and sink.

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Yes, luxury-- in Latin,
also defined as a vicious

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indulgence--

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looks like bagged pastries,
coffee, briefcases,

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neat rolling suitcases--

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I still think they're marvels--

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red caps with trolleys
helping the oldsters;

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benches, a rich, worn
mahogany; walls of marble,

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and quarried in Sicily;
wall sconces, bronze;

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and the whole of the interior
lined with creamy rookwood

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of Cincinnati tiles.

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I'm balancing on the very
edge of the beaux-arts

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here, as the
well-intentioned music

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policy promotes this morning's
calming selection, the New

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World Symphony.

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And here comes the English
horn's rise-and-stretch moment,

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all the tender, new, foresty
ferns unfurling, slow rambles

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in meadows,
encounters with moss,

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swallows, silvery
waterfall, everything fresh,

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alighting, awaking.

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And here I am, among
those in the station,

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arriving and departing,
here and alive.

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Alive and recalling
how tense that passage

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when I played it myself, the
exposed intervals, not terribly

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complicated but
treacherous still.

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As every English
horn player knows,

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careless phrasing at the
modulation or tempo too slow

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tanks the primordial, tips the
whole thing into crassness.

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Even today I'm
nervous hearing it,

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having been trained to
anticipate ruin and adjust.

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Here, now, in the station,
I'm listening hard,

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as he is to the music, in a
moment of stillness, awaiting

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his train, this beautiful,
scruffy conservatory student

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en route to New York
with his violin.

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I see his distraction--

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not this again,
not the new world.

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Then a softening as
he busies himself.

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It's Dvorak at least, not
Pachelbel's godawful "Canon."

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As he takes out his book, travel
cup, iPod, plugs himself in--

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Mahler, I bet he's
a serious sort--

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the board flips to departures,
and he gathers his stuff.

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There he goes toward his train.

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There he goes with the
crowd, finding the gate.

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He's distracted-- his
girlfriend, audition,

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apartment.

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He's not thinking
this lightness,

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this early bird ramble could be
the very last thing he hears.

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There he goes, off to
Gate E with that luxury."

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Thank you so much.

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[APPLAUSE]

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